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November 2016

Hundreds of people joined spontaneous protests over the jailing of Kurdish politicians Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag from the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP). Thousands aired their grievances on social media platforms. "This is Erdogan's final declaration of war on the Kurdish people," said Ali Ertan Toprak, head of Germany's large Kurdish community when talking with DW.

Prime Minister of Ukraine Volodymyr Groysman and Head of the IMF mission Ron van Rooden discussed at a meeting on Friday the issues of Ukraine's cooperation with the IMF, the budget process, raising the minimum wage in Ukraine, as well as the government's plans concerning further reforms.

As President Vladimir Putin seeks to reinforce Russia’s position as a global power through nuclear saber-rattling and military campaigns in Ukraine and Syria, the next U.S. administration will need to both contain and cooperate with him. If played right, that may get easier in the years to come. The reason: The transformation of the world’s natural gas markets is weakening Moscow’s economic toolkit. And that will make Putin’s pipeline politics — his use of natural resources for foreign policy purposes — obsolete.

The Paris Agreement to combat climate change became international law on Friday — a landmark deal about tackling global warming amid growing fears that the world is becoming hotter even faster than scientists expected.

While the US-Russia relationship has been deteriorating rapidly since 2014 and faces a new crisis with the current situation around Aleppo, the bilateral relationship in Central Asia has been relatively stable…because it was already weak and unbalanced.

The meeting of the Moldovan-Romanian intergovernmental commission on economic cooperation concluded today in Chisinau by signing four important documents focused on different issues of bilateral cooperation in various sectors.

The Croatian government’s furious response to the arrest of ten Bosnian Croats on war crimes charges in Bosnia and Herzegovina was diplomatically incompetent and will not help the suspects, analysts argue.

The Nord Stream 2 project, which envisages Russian gas supply to the EU bypassing Ukraine, acts as a wedge strategy, weakening the cohesion of the EU, Antto Vihma, a senior research fellow of the Finnish Institute of International Affairs’ Global Security Research Program, believes.

The German government has recently put on hold two planned takeovers of German high-tech companies by Chinese investors, with Berlin citing "security reasons" and fears of a sellout of crucial technology. German news agency DPA reported Monday a German embassy envoy was summoned by the Chinese foreign ministry in protest of Chinese investors being hampered in Germany.

Secretary of State of the Republic of Kazakhstan Gulshara Abdykalikova participated in the international forum of scientists and experts entitled "Nursultan Nazarbayev's model: 25 years of peace and creation" on Friday, Kazinform has learnt from the Akorda's press service.

Russia is reinforcing its Baltic Fleet in Kaliningrad with two small warships armed with long-range cruise missiles to counter what it sees as a worrying Nato build-up in the region, Russia's daily Izvestia reported on Wednesday.

The annexation of Crimea by Russia and armed aggression in Eastern Ukraine confirmed the view that a strong nation is not possible without a strong army. Since the hostilities began official Kyiv has stepped up its cooperation with the North Atlantic Alliance.